Starstorm Report #35: Skree zaps his way into the Awesomenauts!

Skree the technoshaman has joined the Awesomenauts and is now available to all players that have access to the Awesomenauts: Starstorm expansion! Skree is a hitchhiker that was dumped on the Starstorm battleship by an angry space trucker. He mistook the deactivated robots aboard the station for gods, and proceeded to build shrines in their honor. In doing so, he accidentally activated the ancient warmachine. Scared of his not-so-benevolent gods come to life, he joined the Awesomenauts to search for nicer spirit-gods to worship.

Armed with a lightning rod, saw blades, and his mysterious Totem of Power, Skree is especially powerful against bunched-up opponents. His auto-attack has an impressive range and jumps to secondary targets, but only deals full damage to the first character he hits. Saw Blade can be launched and deals damage to all enemies it passes through. The blade can deployed by triggering the button a second time (much like Coco's Ball Lightning and Derpl's Nuke), which will cause it to remain in place for several seconds before returning to Skree - once again dealing damage to all enemies it passes through.

Finally, his Totem of Power skill allows him to deploy a destroyable Totem that is able to block off escape routes for enemy Naut's or act as an obstacle for pursuers. Skree is able to dish our high amounts of damage as long as enemies do not get close to him, but will often need to put himself in harms way in order to threaten his opponents. Be careful not to overextend when playing as Skree!

In addition to Skree joining the ranks of the Awesomenauts, Update 2.5 also includes Brazilian Portuguese translations, improvements to the replays feature, balance changes, and a rudimentary AI Editor. This AI Editor can be used to create bots for custom games, and is primarily meant for the most hardcore players that are interested in modding their game or helping us improve the quality of the in-game bots. It's nowhere near as feature-rich as we envisioned the AI Editor that was included in the stretch goals for this campaign, but we hope that this very basic editor will lead to some great community-created content.

With the launch of the Awesomenauts 2.5 update we have transitioned the Starstorm expansion out of the 'Early Access' category on Steam. Don't worry though: this doesn't mean that we're done with the development of the expansion. We still have loads of stuff in development, including the fully-featured online spectator mode, the Starstorm map, global chat, and the mysterious fifth 'Naut. Marking Starstorm as an officially released product doesn't change anything for people who already owned the content, but it tells new players that getting in on the expansion now shouldn't feel like purchasing something that 'feels' incomplete or unfinished.

I also have some great news to share about the physical rewards that many of you been awaiting! The posters have started to arrive for some backers, and shipping on the Silver Tier ($75) is expected to be completed next week. Several of the backers in the Gold Tier ($100) will also receive their shirts soon, but two of the three designs are currently still in production. When your reward is shipped you will receive a message from our distributor Level Up Studios, and this message will containing tracking info. The remaining t-shirts are expected to be finished late next week, and Level Up Studios will begin shipping them as soon as possible once they arrive.

If you run into any problems with your shipment, please send me an email at robin@ronimo-games.com and I'll put you in touch with our distributor!

Lastly, many skins are on sale during the ongoing Steam Summer Sale this week! If you've been looking to pick up one of the Awesomenaut skins on the cheap - this is your time to strike!

For now, stay cool and don't worry 'bout a ting, mon! Skree is on it!

- Robin

PS. if you still haven't received your key for the Starstorm expansion, please get in touch via robin@ronimo-games.com and I'll get back to you as soon as I can.